97Relating the Parts to the WholeIn the precedi.docx

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97
Relating the Parts
to the Whole
In the preceding chapters, we have used the word system as a
way ofillustrating the interrelated nature of the elements that
make up an
organization or a change effort. This way of thinking, first
introduced
in the late 1950s by MIT professor Jay Forrester, became
popular in
1990 when the now classic work The Fifth Discipline was first
pub-
lished. In it, Peter Senge proposes a systems thinking
framework as
the foundation of what he terms a learning organization. As a
result
of this pioneering work, systems thinking is now understood
and
practiced in many professions. It has been less commonly used
in the
field of education.

A system is a “perceived whole whose elements ‘hang together’
because they
continually affect each other over time and operate toward a
common purpose.”1
Systems thinking is about trying to keep that “whole” in mind,
even while work-
ing on the various parts. More “ecological” than logical, it
recognizes that simple,
linear cause-and-effect explanations sometimes miss the fact
that today’s effect
may in turn be tomorrow’s cause, influencing some other part of
the system. This
shift in thinking, and the need to understand the
interrelationships among the
various components of the work, presents an enormous learning
challenge for
change leaders. It requires addressing a number of questions:
• How can change leaders form a more holistic picture of
change processes that
makes sense to themselves and to others?
c h a p t e r
S I X

c06.qxd 10/12/05 4:17 PM Page 97
Wagner, Tony, et al. <i>Change Leadership : A Practical Guide
to Transforming Our Schools</i>, John Wiley & Sons,
Incorporated, 2005. ProQuest
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• How can change leaders learn to identify the contributors to
an identified
problem?
• Where do change leaders look to find these contributors?

• How does a leader build a shared vision of success that is
coherent and is truly
owned and inspiring to others?
More “ecological” than logical, it recognizes that
simple, linear cause-and-effect explanations
sometimes miss the fact that today’s effect may in
turn be tomorrow’s cause, influencing some other
part of the system.
These are difficult questions to answer individually, and rarely
do leaders have
the data needed to answer them all at once. Yet it is very
difficult to develop
a thoughtful strategy for change without some clear answers—or
at least some
thoughtful hypotheses. What is needed is an analytic framework
for understand-
ing the interrelated parts or elements of the change process in
schools and districts.
This chapter explores a means for leaders to develop and
practice new ways of
seeing the “whole.”
ARENAS OF CHANGE
We offer an approach to thinking systemically about the
challenges and goals

of change in schools and districts, which we call the 4 C’s—
competency, condi-
tions, culture, and context.2 As we walk you through each of
these components,
we encourage you to become familiar with the ideas represented
by each and with
the relationships you see among them. We start with
competencies because devel-
opment of adults’ skills is the most obvious and familiar realm
of the change work.
From here, we move to the other arenas of change and some
strategies for
improvement that may be progressively less familiar to the
reader.
The goal of change we proposed in Chapter Two—improving
teaching and
learning—remains at the center of the work. As we discuss the 4
C’s, we ask, what
do leaders need to think about to achieve this goal throughout
their school or
district?
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Competencies
Most efforts to improve education have at their core a focus on
professional de-
velopment as a way to build competency. In this context of
school transformation,

we define competencies as the repertoire of skills and
knowledge that influences stu-
dent learning. Skillful, competent adults are a foundation of this
work. Teachers
and administrators at every level of the system need to develop
their competen-
cies regularly through ongoing development opportunities. This
is not a terribly
new idea. But we have come to understand the limits of
competency building as a
stand-alone strategy for change. Even with a focus on improving
instruction,
developing educators’ competencies is necessary but
insufficient for reinventing
schools. Competencies are most effectively built when
professional development
is focused, job-embedded, continuous, constructed, and
collaborative. But—and
here’s where the system comes into play—implementing this
type of professional
development necessarily implicates many parts of the system.
To illustrate, we’d like to introduce you to Luis and Althea,
whose stories illustrate
the systemic nature of schools and districts. Luis is a ninth-

grade English teacher at
“Franklin High School” in a district where student literacy rates
are uniformly low
and where teachers have had little training in how to teach
literacy at the secondary
level. After much research and discussion, district leaders have
decided to focus
change efforts on improving students’ literacy skills through the
teaching of writ-
ing. His district sends all its English teachers for training in
“writers’ workshop,” a
comprehensive strategy for teaching writing that has been in use
for more than
thirty years. Luis and his colleagues learn about the importance
of having students
write frequently and the value of live, one-on-one conferencing
with students in-
stead of just filling papers with red ink. They learn how to
increase motivation with
relevant writing topics and authentic audiences outside of
school.
Luis comes back from this training with very mixed feelings.
On the one hand,
he is excited to try these new approaches to teaching writing.

They make sense to
him. But almost immediately he is overwhelmed by the reality
of what it would take
to put these new ideas into practice. Luis has 130 students. How
many sets of 130 pa-
pers can he grade in a month? The same goes for conferencing.
Luis tries a few one-
on-one conferences and begins to understand how valuable they
are—both as a way
to teach writing and as a means to better know students in order
to learn what writ-
ing topics might motivate them. But each takes more than
fifteen minutes. How
many can he do in his one planning period per day? When will
he prepare his les-
sons, if all his time is taken up with student conferences?
Finally, he begins to have
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students read their work aloud in small groups so they can get
feedback from peers,
but here too, Luis quickly becomes discouraged. The students
enjoy reading their
work aloud, but it takes time for every student to have a turn.
With all the required
material that he must cover, time is a precious commodity in
Luis’ classes.
Althea is Luis’ principal at Franklin High. Their district has
come to understand

the need to teach principals how to supervise for instructional
improvement. In
addition to working with English teachers on writing, it is
developing the compe-
tencies of its principals as instructional leaders. Althea and all
the principals in her
district have received training in how to do school learning
walks. The principals
have also been examining and discussing videotapes of
teaching, and for the first
time Althea feels more confident about going into classrooms
and determining
what might be most important to teachers’ practice. She is
learning the skills of
powerful supervision that far surpass her earlier training in the
bureaucratic details
of how to fill out an evaluation form. She sees how her time in
the classrooms can
enhance the opportunities for students through better support
for her teachers.
She is excited to think of herself as a leader of instruction who
might effectively
practice these new competencies.
When Althea thinks about scheduling some classroom visits, she

immediately
realizes there are problems. The district leadership places a
premium on answering
parent and central office phone calls and e-mails promptly.
Furthermore, the dis-
trict’s test scores have plateaued in recent years, so Althea has
been expected to spend
her time ensuring that all teachers are covering the required
state standards. The
district is also stressing the importance of improving the daily
attendance rate in
its high schools and wants school administrators to spend more
time tracking down
truants and “in-school” dropouts—students who come to school
to see friends but
who rarely attend classes. Althea knows that if she is to expand
her role in super-
vising individual teachers, phone calls and e-mails won’t get
answered promptly,
and daily student attendance numbers won’t go up. She also
knows that the skills
of the few teachers with whom she can work in a month may
improve at the ex-
pense of the school’s test scores in all classes. When she is not

busy doing hall sweeps
for kids out of class, should she rush to the office to answer
phone calls and e-mails?
Ride herd on her assistant principals and department heads to
make sure every-
thing in the curriculum gets covered? Or can she afford the
luxury of spending
more time in classes trying to give in-depth help to a few
teachers? She can’t
do it all. She begins to wonder how she might become clearer
about her highest
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priorities and what other conditions in her work environment
might be changed
in ways that would enable her to focus on what’s most
important.
Conditions
For both Luis and Althea, opportunities to further develop and
effectively use the
new competencies they’ve acquired are seriously undermined by
the conditions of
work imposed on them. We define conditions as the external
architecture
surrounding student learning, the tangible arrangements of time,
space, and resources.
Some examples include:
• Time spent with and for kids, with colleagues, with parents,
with the community

• Explicit expectations around roles and responsibilities, student
outcomes tied
to assessments, laws and policies, contracts
• Scale and structure, including size of physical plant,
organization of physical
plant, teacher-student ratio, transitions between grade levels
Luis’ instructional goals ran into several challenges associated
with time—time
for reading student papers, time for students to “workshop”
their writing with each
other, and time for him to confer with students individually. For
Luis to use his
new competencies to improve his teaching, one condition that
might need to
change is the number of students for whom he is responsible.
But the district office,
although eager to improve students’ writing and support the
investment it
has already made in the writers’ workshop, is also wrestling
with recent budget cut-
backs and is not in a position to allocate resources for smaller
class sizes.
Let’s assume that the district comes to appreciate the time

barriers that frus-
trate the implementation of writers’ workshop. It decides to
tackle this condition of
teaching and learning and reduces the number of students Luis
sees by combin-
ing English and history into a double block. Now Luis sees 65
students a day for
ninety minutes instead of 130 students for forty-five minutes.
The district then
takes the additional step of “looping” ninth- and tenth-grade
classes, so that Luis
now teaches the same group of students for two years.
Suddenly, without spend-
ing additional money, Luis’ two-year overall student load drops
from 260 students
to 65 students! Luis is ecstatic. For the first time in his
professional career, the
conditions of teaching and learning in his school allow him to
know all his students
well. Now Luis can begin to try out the new competencies he
has learned to teach
writing. He feels more successful with more of his students than
ever before.

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Meanwhile, the district also acts to improve the conditions that
enable Althea to
use her newly developed competencies related to improving
instruction. First, and

perhaps most important, the superintendent receives the school
board’s approval to
clarify expectations about principals’ roles and responsibilities.
The central office has
stated that improving instruction is the priority. The district
leadership supports the
principals in this instructional leadership role by encouraging
principals to delegate
more of their managerial responsibilities to other administrators
so that they can
spend more of their time in classrooms. They even designated
an ombudsman
position for each school and trained individuals in these roles to
handle complaints
and minor disciplinary cases. With these clarifications and
supports, the conditions
of Althea’s job have changed fundamentally; she is no longer
expected to have an
open office door and deal with every crisis the minute it comes
up. Instead, she has
authorization to block two hours in her calendar every day to be
in classrooms to
exercise her new competencies for improving instruction.
Conditions represent the visible arrangements and allocations of

time, space,
and money. In contrast, culture, which we take up in the next
section, refers to the
invisible but powerful meanings and mindsets that are held
individually and
collectively throughout the system.
Culture
We define culture as the shared values, beliefs, assumptions,
expectations, and be-
haviors related to students and learning, teachers and teaching,
instructional leader-
ship, and the quality of relationships within and beyond the
school. Culture refers to
the invisible but powerful meanings and mindsets held
individually and collec-
tively throughout the system. The current culture has impeded
Althea and Luis’
ability to deepen the understanding and application of their
learning; they
encounter new difficulties as they attempt to use their newfound
competencies
and changed conditions to positively influence student learning.
Luis is anxious to compare notes about his students’ work with
other

humanities teachers, and he thinks that perhaps they ought to be
developing
some common standards for grading students’ writing. But
despite the fact that
teachers see their departmental meetings as a waste of time, past
attempts to
make these meetings more substantive have met with covert,
and sometimes
overt, resistance. Luis also observes that many of his colleagues
appear distrust-
ful of the administration and even of one another. In the staff
lounge, a few
veteran faculty are always heard complaining about the
principal, or they’re
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griping about the parents, or the kids’ poor behavior.
Increasingly, Luis feels dis-
heartened by the culture of isolation and lack of respect in his
building, which
undermines any attempts at collaboration. He knows his
principal, Althea, is well
meaning but wonders if she’s intimidated by those veteran
faculty. It appears to
be a vicious cycle, and Luis wonders how it will ever get
broken. So he retreats
to his classroom—the one place where he can create a culture of
mutual respect

and shared accountability.
Althea also wonders how she is going to influence some of her
veteran teach-
ers’ beliefs and behaviors and the culture of the building.
Additionally, she has been
spending a good deal of her time in classrooms now, and the
more she observes,
the more questions she has about how to effectively move
teachers to higher levels
of competency. What are the best ways to conference with
teachers? Which teach-
ing skills are most important to emphasize first? These topics
weren’t covered in
the principals’ two-day training, and even if they had been,
Althea would proba-
bly not have been able to take in the information back then. But
now that she’s
ready to try new approaches, she remains silent rather than ask
for the help she
feels her colleagues could provide. In her district, principals
don’t ask for help or
even acknowledge that they have questions about their roles as
leaders. Not only
is there very little real communication among the principals, but

many see one
another as rivals for the attention of the superintendent, the
highest test scores,
the prestige of new programs, or extra discretionary resources
that the district
sometimes doles out to the “favored ones.” The culture of the
district, Althea begins
to realize, is one of isolation and competition, where principals
are rewarded for
having all the answers. As she sits, frustrated, in yet another
district administra-
tors’ meeting where announcements take up most of the time, it
suddenly occurs
to her that she has unwittingly replicated the same culture in her
school. She
resolves to work with Luis and her other teacher leaders to, at
the least, transform
her school’s culture into one that is more collaborative and
values the process of
inquiry and adult learning.
Althea knows that to succeed with her most challenged kids,
creating a more
collegial adult learning culture at Franklin High isn’t enough.
She knows that she

needs more collaborative relationships with parents, for
example. And she and her
teachers need to become clearer about the skills the school’s
graduates will need—
two elements of what we call the “context” of teaching and
learning. Nevertheless,
Althea leaves the meeting excited about the idea of working to
improve the cul-
ture of her building. She knows that’s where she must start.
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Context
A fourth influence on Luis and Althea’s work, and the work of
all of us in schools
and districts, is the social, historical, and economic context in
which all these efforts
take place. By context we are especially referring to “skill
demands” all students must
meet to succeed as providers, learners, and citizens and the
particular aspirations,
needs, and concerns of the families and community that the
school or district serves.
As we discussed in Chapter One, the world of the 2020s, the
knowledge economy
of the future, for which our students are preparing, will be very
different from the
world of the 1970s—and even from what we experience today.
Understanding con-
text means knowing more about the worlds from which students

come and those
for which they must be prepared.
Context also refers to the larger organizational systems within
which we work,
and their demands and expectations, formal and informal. For a
school this might
be the district; for the district it might be the state; the state
exists within the context
of the federal government. We need to understand all this
contextual information
to help inform and shape the work we do to transform the
culture, conditions, and
competencies of our schools and districts. And we may, in turn,
need to influence
elements of the context in which we work, as well. Figure 6.1
illustrates the inter-
dependencies of the 4 C’s.
As Althea works to build a more collaborative culture in her
school, focusing
particularly on creating communities of practice that will
replace or transform
those departmental meetings, Luis and his colleagues are
working to set common

standards for students’ writing. They have begun to question
whether their stan-
dards are high enough and wonder what level of writing
proficiency colleges now
expect. The community college across town has long
complained that nearly half
of the district’s graduates have needed some form of
remediation in writing, so
Luis seeks permission from Althea for a team from his
Humanities Department to
spend the day visiting classes and talking with the professors
there. The team mem-
bers are surprised to learn that students require help with much
more than just
the mechanics of good writing; many come to the college not
knowing how to
organize their thinking or to express their reasoning clearly in
essays. The college
teachers are also concerned about students’ lack of research and
study skills. These
insights lead Luis and his colleagues to begin talking about how
they can strengthen
students’ analytic skills and build more independent research
projects into the cur-

riculum. It further sharpens their focus on the competencies
they need to continue
to develop to be effective literacy and writing teachers.
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At the same time, Luis and his colleagues want to ensure greater
parental sup-
port for the emphasis they are placing on writing. At back-to-
school night later
in the fall, all the humanities teachers talk with parents about
some of the ways in
which they can help—most of all, by asking their children to
share the contents of
their writing portfolios frequently. The department encourages
Althea to address
the parents and to send a letter home to them, as well. In her
letter, she stresses the
importance of all students having the right conditions for
learning at home—a
supervised two-hour quiet time in the evenings for schoolwork.
And she gives
parents her e-mail address, encouraging them to contact her
with any questions
or concerns they might have. She also launches an advisory
committee to help the
school create a culture that is more responsive to the needs and
concerns of all
parents, not just the ones who are vocal.

Figure 6.1
Interdependencies of the 4 C’s
Improving
teaching
and
learning
Conditions
of learning
and teaching
for students
and adults
Culture of
classrooms,
schools,
districts
Competencies of
adults
Contexts: Understa
n
d
in
g
g
lo

b
a
l,
s
t
a
t
e
,
a
n
d
c
o
m
m
unityrealitiesand
re
-v
is
io
n
in
g
w
h
a

t
a
ll
s
t
u
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e
n
t
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.
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By reaching out in these ways, Luis and Althea are
acknowledging the impor-
tance of the contexts within which they work. Through
conversations with the
college teachers, Luis comes to better understand the skills his
students most
need—the world for which they must be prepared. And by
listening to and working
more proactively with parents, Althea and her teachers are
attempting to better
understand and even perhaps to positively influence the world

from which their
students come.
We have captured some of Luis and Althea’s baseline
challenges in competen-
cies, conditions, culture, and context in a graphic organizer (see
Figure 6.2).
Although their journey has just begun, they have set some
crucial changes in
motion. Just as important, they have begun to recognize how
one element of their
work affects another; this insight reflects the core of systems
thinking.
Your system—any system—is perfectly
designed to produce the results
you’re getting.
Another dimension to systems thinking is that a system runs on
its own mo-
mentum and all its parts work together to keep it going. The
interactions of these
parts naturally create some kind of product or result. In fact,
your system—any
system—is perfectly designed to produce the results you’re
getting. In our illus-

trative story, the result Luis and Althea wanted was improved
student learning. To
change even one feature of that—students’ writing—the system
had to change,
and, as Luis and Althea discovered, all parts of the system had
to be addressed. The
challenge in systems work, we find, is that because the system
flows so effortlessly
(before you begin to change it), it is hard to see the parts that
are interacting and
how they work together to hold the results in place.
With a beginning understanding of the 4 C’s and how these
interrelated
elements affect the task of improving learning, teaching, and
leading in place, we
now invite you as an individual (or your community of practice)
to use this sys-
tems thinking tool as a way to better identify and diagnose some
of the factors that
influence the problem you’ve been working on throughout this
book. (See Exer-
cise 6.1 and Figure 6.3.)
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Exercise 6.1: 4 C’s Diagnostic Tool—As Is
Step One
Using a blank version of the 4 C’s chart provided, put the
problem statement you refined in

Chapter Two (see Exercise 2.1) in the center of the overlapping
circles.
Step Two
Now take some time to reflect on the contributors to your
current system as they relate to
the problem you’ve identified. The following questions can get
you started.
Figure 6.2
Baseline 4 C’s Analysis for Franklin High School
Improving
teaching for
improving
students’
literacy
skills
• No clear district or building
priority on improving
student writing—
everything is important!
• Isolation within the
buildings and across the
district
• Teachers distrust
administration and
each other
Culture
• Class sizes too large for

individualization
• Little time for classroom
visits
• Too many management
requests and crises
• No common standards
for students’ writing
Conditions
• High student remediation rate in
community college classes
• Parent concerns and ability to
support students
Context
• Ninth-grade teachers lack skills in
teaching literacy
• Principal lacks skills in providing
meaningful feedback to teachers
Competencies
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Competencies
How well do we:
• Think strategically?
• Identify student learning needs?
• Gather and interpret data?
• Collaborate?
• Give and receive critiques?
• Productively disagree?
• Reflect and make midcourse corrections?
Conditions
How well do we create and maintain:

• Time for problem solving, for learning, for talking about
challenges?
• Relevant and user-friendly student data?
• Agreed upon performance standards?
• Clear priorities and focus for each person’s work?
• District- and building-level support?
Culture
How would we characterize:
• Our level of expectations for all students’ learning?
(Consistently high? Medium?
Low? Or a mix of these depending on which students?)
• Our school’s agenda? (Multiple and unrelated? Frequent
changes? Steady,
consistent focus? Related initiatives that build on each other?)
• The communications between district and school leadership to
teachers?
(Directive? Compliance oriented? Engaged in building
cosponsorship and
ownership?)
• Adult relationships with each other? (Lacking trust?
Trusting?)
• Adult views of responsibility for all students’ learning?
(Blames others? Sees
various contributors, including oneself?)
Context
How well do we:

• Understand and work with students’ families?
• See clearly the core competencies students will need for work,
citizenship, and
continuous learning?
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Step Three
Now add brief, bulleted descriptions of the strengths or assets
your school or district has—
as they relate to the problem you’re trying to solve—to the
appropriate circles or the overlaps
between the circles. We encourage you to go back to the seven
disciplines diagnostic (Chapter
Two, Exercise 2.2) and the three continua diagnostics you
completed in Chapter Four (Exer-
cises 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3) and consider your responses as current
contributors to your system.
Step Four
Using a different color, insert bulleted descriptions into the
appropriate circles, listing the
weaknesses or challenges that will need to be overcome in order
to solve your problem.
Figure 6.3
4 C’s Diagnostic Tool—As Is
Write your
problem
statement
here
Culture Conditions

Context
Competencies
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This exercise can be a great help in beginning planning. For
example, Luis and

Althea’s baseline analysis (shown in Figure 6.2) was an
important early step in their
school improvement work. Once you’ve completed this
exercise, we encourage you
take time to consider any new insights or questions that arise
from your diagnos-
tic work. For example:
• Does your understanding of the problem change in any way?
• Do you see new or different ways of going at the problem?
• Does your diagnosis begin to suggest some work that needs to
be done before
other work can be undertaken?
Do you feel ready to answer these questions? If not, what more
would you need
to know? Are there specific data you need to collect in order to
develop a robust pic-
ture of the various contributions of the 4 C’s? How might you
collect these data?
What is your next step? A real-world example may help as you
tackle these questions.
TOWARD TRANSFORMATION: USING THE 4 C’S
In Chapters Two and Four, we briefly mentioned the work of
Superintendent Tony

Alvarado and his deputy superintendent (later his successor)
Elaine Fink. We now
explore some of their work in greater depth as a way of
illustrating how change
leaders have used systemic thinking to guide an improvement
process.
Community District 2 was one of thirty-two community school
districts in
New York City until a citywide reorganization in 2003. It
included about 22,000
students from exceptionally diverse backgrounds: 29 percent
white, 14 percent
African American, 22 percent Hispanic, 34 percent Asian, and
less than
1 percent Native American. English was a second language for
about 20 percent of
the students, and nearly half came from economically
disadvantaged families.3
Beginning in the late 1980s, District 2 began a long-term,
systemwide instruc-
tional improvement effort. Over the next ten years, District 2
demonstrated dra-
matic results, moving from sixteenth out of thirty-two in test
results across

New York to second (just behind a predominantly white,
middle-class district).
What accounts for such dramatic results? The answer to that
question is a rich
and important story, one documented more fully by various
researchers.4 The
abridged answer is that District 2 adopted a tenacious focus on
the improvement
of literacy instruction, and kept this its sole focus for the next
five years. District
leaders reallocated resources from the central office, freeing up
funds to funnel
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into the improvement of literacy instruction. Leaders began to
promote and model
a strong normative culture of respect, trust, and accountability
for learning.
Furthermore, the district developed an intensive infrastructure
for job-embedded
professional development—for administrators and teachers—
focused on literacy
instruction.
Leaders began to promote and model a
strong normative culture of respect, trust, and
accountability for learning.
The story of PS 198, an elementary school within District 2,

provides a view
into how Alvarado, Fink, and the school principal worked
systemically to turn that
school around.5 It also can help expand understanding of the
interrelationship of
the 4 C’s.
Working Within the Context
In the 1990s, a large majority of families served by PS 198
lived in poverty. More
than 90 percent of its students were eligible for free or reduced-
fee lunch (a
nationally used indicator of poverty in schools). It consistently
ranked last on read-
ing scores in the district. Superintendent Tony Alvarado hired a
new principal,
Gloria Buckerey, in 1996. Buckerey worked hard to weed out
incompetent teachers,
brought in several staff developers, and hired new young
teachers. Few of them
lasted more than a year. The job seemed overwhelming, and
after three years noth-
ing had changed. Only about 25 percent of the fourth graders
were reading at or
above grade level on the comparatively easy standardized tests

that were then in
use. The problem of poor student achievement and high staff
turnover became so
severe that the State of New York put PS 198 on its list of
“Schools Under Review”
in 1998. If things didn’t change quickly, the state would close
the school. Alvarado
and Fink decided new strategies were needed to turn the
situation around, and
Fink began visiting the school monthly. Over a period of about
six months, she
developed an action plan for change focused on literacy.
Fink’s decision to begin their improvement work with literacy
was not unex-
pected. As we mentioned, the sole focus of District 2’s school
improvement
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efforts—in staff development, in conversations with
principals—was how to
improve teaching and learning for literacy. District leadership
reasoned that if
students could not read, comprehend, and write well, then they
certainly were not
going to be able to decode math or science texts. Fink also knew
that trying to
attend to science, social studies, and math skills all at once
would not provide the
focus—and the opportunity for success—that teachers and
students needed.

Changing the Conditions of Teaching and Learning
One clear way to improve students’ literacy skills is to simply
have them spend
more of their day reading and writing. Therefore, the first thing
that Fink did as
she began to work with Buckerey and her PS 198 faculty was to
examine the school
schedule. She did not try to impose a new schedule. She simply
posed a problem
for Buckerey and the faculty to solve: How are we going to find
more time in the
day for literacy instruction and for adult learning? Together,
they created a new
schedule that allowed for three-hour literacy blocks in the
school day and devoted
significantly more time for teachers to talk together about their
work. The faculty
also decided that the “specialist” teachers—those who taught
art, science, music,
and so on—would learn how to teach literacy and be an
additional resource in the
classroom for those literacy blocks. Fink allocated extra
resources to the school for
two additional reading specialists.

The immediate result of these changes was that every reading
group could now
work intensely with a teacher every day rather than once a
week. Fink and Alvarado
also established a summer program for all the students in PS
198 to give them more
time for learning. In the second year, they added another
program to better prepare
incoming kindergartners for the start of school. These programs
were so successful
that they were subsequently adopted throughout the district in
those schools
serving the most at-risk students.
Developing the Competencies of Teachers and Principals
When Fink began analyzing the school’s reading test data, she
quickly realized that
three-fourths of the fourth graders had spent their entire school
careers with
beginning teachers! These inexperienced teachers didn’t know
how to teach the
balanced literacy program supported by District 2. And because
the turnover rate
was so high, there were no teachers in the building with the
skills to help their less

experienced colleagues. Fink approached the union and
suggested that they create
a new Distinguished Teacher position—with extra duties and a
higher salary.
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Two distinguished teachers, the best literacy educators in the
district, came to the
school and worked alongside regular classroom teachers,
modeling how to teach
literacy and coaching their peers. These distinguished teachers
also worked with
all the staff during the time available for whole school
professional development.
Although literacy was a nonnegotiable focus in District 2,
Alvarado and Fink
did not believe that all schools and all students would best learn
from one cur-
riculum. As Fink said in a conversation with one of us, “You
don’t stand in front
of your principals and say ‘all schools should. . . .’ Each school,
like each child, has
its own unique learning challenges. This is about kids’ learning;
it’s not about phi-
losophy. All kids need rigor, but they learn in different ways,
need different things.”6
Fink worked with Buckerey, the visiting distinguished teachers,
and the faculty to
adapt the district’s balanced literacy program to the particular

needs of the stu-
dents in PS 198. All teachers now spent one half hour each day
on word study
(phonics), in addition to all the other elements of the literacy
program. Gradually,
and with support from internal and external experts, they all
learned how to
strengthen their ability to teach the balanced literacy
curriculum.
As fruitful as this was, Fink and Buckerey realized that the
competencies teach-
ers were developing could be considered successful only if there
was evidence that
students were now learning more. Using the same “graded”
reading texts with
all students, the faculty developed common indicators of
progress and prepared
charts for each student that showed exactly what reading level
each had attained.
Fink visited every classroom in the school and discussed each
student’s chart with
Buckerey monthly. They also reviewed each teacher’s
individual learning plan and
made changes, as needed, according to the students’ reading

progress. (These prac-
tices, pioneered in PS 198, eventually became widespread in the
district.)
Finally, the two worked closely to develop Buckerey’s abilities
to coach
her teachers and run effective staff meetings. Fink told all her
principals, “I have
failed you if I can’t teach you how to teach your teachers.” She
provided time for
Buckerey to be in study groups with other principals, make
school visitations, and
work with another principal in the district who was assigned to
be her “buddy.”
Transforming the District Culture
As Fink’s earlier comment implied, the district had an explicit
understanding that
any one school’s problem was everyone’s problem. Its motto
was, “isolation is the
enemy of improvement.” Alvarado and Fink helped other
principals understand
that PS 198’s struggle was shared by all of them—and that its
students depended
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on the cooperation of the entire system. Principals of other
schools knew that a
disproportionate share of the financial resources was going to
PS 198, and they
supported that decision, as did the board. They worked
collaboratively to investi-

gate and develop new leadership and supervision skills.
Monthly principals’ meet-
ings were focused solely on discussions related to improving
instruction, and many
began with school learning walks. Alvarado and Fink
emphasized that the culture
of the district had to connect adults’ learning explicitly to the
improvement of
instruction and to students’ learning.7 Their other motto was,
“if it’s not about
teaching and learning, then it’s not about anything.”8 In effect,
their entire district
was made up of nested communities of practice related to the
continuous
improvement of instruction.
Their entire district was made up of nested
communities of practice related to the continuous
improvement of instruction.
What were the results of their efforts? They were more
successful than they ever
thought possible. Two years after PS 198 was put under review
by the state, it
was taken off the list. By the end of year three, 55 percent of

the students scored
in the top half of a newer and much more difficult literacy test.
Their scores were in
the middle range of a district whose test scores were the second
highest in the
region and whose literacy scores continue to improve every
year. In 2000, Gloria
Buckerey was honored by the state as the principal who had
made the most
progress of any principal leading a School Under Review. And
two of Buckerey’s
teachers had themselves become distinguished teachers in
District 2.
What Alvarado and Fink accomplished as educational leaders in
District 2
remains one of the few successful examples of systemic
districtwide change. Over
a period of years, they created an engaged, knowledge-
generating culture with a
clear focus and widely shared commitment to provide a quality
education for all
students, where teachers had a shared vision of good teaching,
and where there
were powerful collaborative relationships based on trust and

respect. This cultural
shift created the impetus to change the conditions of teaching
and learning
and sustainable development of educator competencies at every
level. Teachers in
District 2 sometimes complained about how hard the work was.
They also said
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they had never been in a place where there was more
collaboration, collegiality,
and opportunity for professional growth.
We have several purposes in telling this remarkable story of
school and district
transformation. We want you to see that this work can be done.
We certainly want
you to feel the pull of success as you read about their
accomplishments. We also
want you to begin to understand their transformation from the
systems perspec-
tive and how the larger system of the district became an
important context and
facilitator of the school’s successful efforts, each with distinct
and explicit roles
focused on the same goal.
We also have another purpose. We want to prepare you to do
some further
analysis of your own school or district so that you can move

from the problem you
identified (what we call your As Is state, your current reality) to
thinking about
how your system might look if it is producing the results you
need—all students,
new skills (your To Be picture). What is important is that both
your As Is and your
To Be pictures capture the contributors to the results you have,
as well as those that
would need to be in place to get the results you want. We also
encourage you to
begin thinking about how to get from “here” to “there.” To help
you do this, we’ll
map out the 4 C’s of PS 198’s journey.
The left side of Exhibit 6.1 should look familiar to you. It is
similar to the
systems view you completed for your own school or district’s
problem. (Again,
we want to stress how much more you will get out of this book
if you are using
this information for your own setting!) You should recognize
the contributors—
such as inexperienced teachers teaching students in the early
grades and a static

curriculum delivery orientation—to PS 198’s low literacy
achievement from their
story. It represents a snapshot of their system at the beginning
of our story.
The right side of Exhibit 6.1 is a snapshot of PS 198’s system at
the end of our story
and shows the contributions to a system that is yielding
different results—high liter-
acy achievement. We call this their To Be picture; it represents
the view we believe they
would have drawn had they used this framework to guide their
planning. We have
laid both diagrams out side by side to illustrate the difference in
the two systems and
how each component needed to be different in order to bring
about different results.
The change from the As Is to the To Be side, the strategies that
PS 198 used, are
briefly summarized here. These strategies represent the thinking
that guided the
results identified in the To Be picture. They are the key efforts
that moved PS 198
from low to high levels of literacy and the actions taken to carry
them out. We include

a synopsis of those actions, as illustrative examples, pulled
from our story.
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As we’ve seen, the 4 C’s diagnostic generates a rich As Is
picture, a dynamic snap-
shot of current assets and challenges in relation to one another
and to the identi-
fied problem. As PS 198’s strategies make clear, the
construction of this As Is picture
is only a first step.
We now invite you into some forward thinking about your
future and what you
are doing and will do to get there. Use Exercise 6.2 and Figure
6.4 to begin the
movement toward your goal.

Figure 6.4
4 C’s Diagnostic Tool—To Be
Write your
problem
statement
here
Culture Conditions
Context
Competencies
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Schools118
Strategy
Focus only on improving
literacy teaching.
Develop principals as
instructional leaders.
Increase time for students’
literacy learning.
Reallocate resources.
Make data-based decisions.
Develop collaborative rela-
tionships among adults.
Action

Give school explicit permission to focus only on
literacy:
• Allocate resources.
• Focus professional development only on literacy.
Deputy superintendent makes monthly visits to teach
principal how to use student reading data to work
with teachers and their individualized learning plans:
• Connect principal to study groups with other
principals.
• Lead school learning walks.
• Lead monthly principal meetings.
• Assign “buddy” to principal.
Establish summer opportunities for all students
to begin (kindergartners) or continue working on
literacy:
• Give responsibility to school to revise schedule
for increased time on literacy with students,
and for adult learning around effective literacy
instruction.
• Work with other schools and school board to
send needed finances to PS 198.

• Provide two reading specialists.
• Work with union to develop Distinguished
Teacher position.
Analyze student and teacher data for which students,
with which teachers, with what outcomes:
• Develop “graded” reading texts and chart student
progress to inform teacher strategies.
• Work collaboratively with the school to adapt
balanced literacy program to meet its needs.
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Exercise 6.2: Moving Toward the Goal, via the 4 C’s
Step One: Create a Picture of Success
Earlier in this chapter, in Exercise 6.1, you used the 4 C’s to
develop a more systemic un-
derstanding of the problem your school or district is tackling.
Now it’s time to review your
completed version of the 4 C’s diagnostic tool.
What would success look like if the problem you identified (in
the middle of your As Is
picture) were solved? In other words, what results do you want
your new system to create?
Be as precise and specific as possible. Write a description of
this picture of success into the
middle of the 4 C’s visual provided.
What would success look like if the problem
you identified (in the middle of your As Is picture)
were solved?
Step Two: Build the To Be Picture

Complete the figure by identifying all the changes within each
of the four arenas of
change—competencies, conditions, culture, and context—that
are necessary if you are
to realize your picture of success. You may wish to revisit the
questions we suggested
in Exercise 6.1, to prompt future-state thinking, such as: How
should we be able to
characterize . . . ? How will we be able to . . . ? What will we
have in place for . . . ?
Map these changes onto the visual within the most appropriate
circle. Some changes
you identify may not fit neatly within a single circle; place
these in the appropriate
overlapping spaces of the diagram. We encourage you, in
completing this visual, to be ex-
haustive in your thinking—list every change you imagine will
be necessary to solve your
problem. Think, in true systemic fashion, of the relationships
between the change arenas.
What relationships will exist, and what shifts will they cause in
other arenas? What might
need to be intentionally engineered in one arena to provoke
change in another?

This completed visual represents your To Be picture, a systemic
and dynamic
vision of the future to which you aspire. This visual should help
identify the land-
scape of work that is necessary in order to make progress on the
problem in your As
Is picture.
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Your two visuals now help present a picture of the distance
between where you are and
where you want to go. We encourage you to consider any
observations or questions that
emerge, such as:
• What insights about the problem and the potential solution(s)
do these visuals offer?
• Are there any standouts or surprises?
Step Three: Identify Current Strategies
Identify any existing strategies that are in place (or are being
implemented) that are
intended to help you solve the problem and realize your To Be
picture. In other words,
identify what you and others are doing to move from where your
school or district cur-
rently is to where you would like it to be as you’ve captured it
in your To Be picture. Before
engaging in this exercise, you may find it helpful to revisit the
strategies and actions that
District 2 undertook with its work in PS 198.

Step Four: Consider the Current Strategies
With respect to the strategies you’ve identified, consider the
following questions:
1. Consider the degree to which each strategy fully addresses a
systemic understanding
of the problem or solution. Do the strategies address the main
contributors to the
problem or the main changes necessary to realize your goal?
2. If there are multiple strategies, consider the degree to which
they, as a whole, address
a systemic understanding of the problem or the main challenges
necessary to realize
your goal.
3. What blind spots, if any, can you identify in the current
work?
4. In what ways do your strategies recognize and seek to affect
the relationships
between the contributors you identified?
5. What additional strategies might be necessary in light of your
As Is and To Be
pictures? Your thoughts will be an important backdrop when we
take up the
question of how to work more strategically.

ANOTHER USE FOR THE 4 C’S
The As Is –To Be diagnostic tools can also be used to create a
greater under-
standing of the need for fundamental change—reinvention
versus reform—as
you realize what a shared vision of success might actually look
like. For exam-
ple, Grand Rapids Public Schools used the As Is –To Be tool in
an ambitious
redesign of its comprehensive high schools. District leaders
wanted a way to engage
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shareholder groups (students, parents, teachers, higher-
education leaders, and busi-
ness partners). They used the tool in mixed-group conversations
to facilitate an
understanding of why Grand Rapids needed to dramatically
redesign its high
schools. This process enabled individuals to share and hear
perspectives of the
dilemmas of high schools and what would be required to truly
transform them
into schools that can nurture, support, and educate all high
school students. The
result? They achieved a deeper sense of focus and purpose,
more engagement
among various shareholders who felt a sense of genuine

ownership of both the
problem and the solution, and greater collaboration in the effort
to transform
the high schools.
We discuss the phasing and staging of a change process in more
depth in Chap-
ter Eight. But first, it’s time to consider systemic thinking from
another angle, this
time looking inward to personal, individual learning and
growth.
Endnotes
1. Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (New York:
Currency Doubleday,
1994), 90.
2. A description of the 4 C’s was first published by Tony
Wagner in Making the Grade:
Reinventing America’s Schools (New York: RoutledgeFalmer,
2002), 134–146.
3. These data are from Richard F. Elmore and Deanna Burney’s
The Challenge of School
Variability: Improving Instruction in New York City’s
Community District #2 (Philadel-
phia: University of Pennsylvania, Consortium for Policy
Research in Education, 1998).
4. For further information, we recommend the following: R. F.
Elmore and D. Burney,

Continuous Improvement in Community District #2, New York
City (University of Pitts-
burgh, HPLC Project, Learning Research and Development
Center, 1998); E. Fink and
L. B. Resnick, Developing Principals as Instructional Leaders
(University of Pittsburgh,
HPLC Project, Learning Research and Development Center,
1999); L. B. Resnick and
M. Harwell, High Performance Learning Communities District
#2 Achievement
(University of Pittsburgh, HPLC Project, Learning Research and
Development Center,
1998); K. Maloy, Building a Learning Community: The Story of
New York City
Community District #2 (University of Pittsburgh, HPLC Project,
Learning Research
and Development Center, 1998).
5. This account is based on a presentation by Anthony Alvarado
and Elaine Fink at the
Grantmakers for Education conference (Boston, Mass.,
November 7, 2000) and sub-
sequent conversations with both Alvarado and Fink. Anthony
Alvarado served as
superintendent in New York City’s Community District 2 from
1987 until 1998 and
was succeeded by his colleague Fink. A slightly different
version of this story was first
published in Wagner’s Making the Grade (note 2).
6. In discussion with Tony Wagner after the Grantmakers
presentation (note 4).
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7. For a more complete description of District 2’s “Theory of
Action” and strategies for
professional development, see Elaine Fink and Lauren B.
Resnick, “Developing Prin-
cipals as Instructional Leaders,” Phi Delta Kappan 82, no. 8
(April 2001): 598–606.
8. The culture of District 2 in the late 1980s and 1990s bore a
close resemblance to the
culture of collaborative problem solving and teacher teamwork

that has been the pri-
mary strategy used in Japan to improve public education. The
Teaching Gap by James
Stigler and James Hiebert, which we mentioned earlier as an
example of a teacher-
driven community of practice, describes what the Japanese call
the lesson study
process, where groups of teachers work together to identify a
common learning prob-
lem of students and then create a model lesson to solve the
problem. Lessons are
refined collaboratively and then, when proven successful, are
widely disseminated.
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